


just gals being pals

by andawaywego



Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: And Naive, Brief Language, Everyone Being Super Stupid, F/F, Fluff, Gals being pals, Just Frustration, Like Minimal Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-27 02:06:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10799451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andawaywego/pseuds/andawaywego
Summary: "Because she’s known pretty much since then—since Alpha-5 caught them staring at each other across the ship that first day—and Kim mumbles into her mouth that she’s known since then, too.They just sort of thought everyone else had known, too."Coming out is harder than they expected. Trimberly.





	just gals being pals

**Author's Note:**

> this is weird but it exists now and hopefully you like it though
> 
> honestly it's borderline crack but that's my thing now apparently
> 
> and i love the boys knowing first and being super supportive and like "duh" but i wanted to write them being stupid boys so
> 
> it's set a year after the movie, in which I made them juniors?? even though it makes more sense for them (at least Jason) to be seniors??
> 
> it's fine. whatever.
> 
> there's no Tommy because like...that involves plot and no thanks.
> 
> (also I don't speak much Spanish so I'm sorry in advance for being a horrible citizen)
> 
> read on.

…

_just gals being pals_

_.._

It happens, finally, in June.

That’s how long it takes for one of them to actually do something about this thing that has been building, solidly, between them ever since that first night—running side-by-side in the dark and then gripping each other fiercely as that _train_ smashed into them.

Trini tries not to be cocky. Doesn’t really think that she—this unspecial girl (barring the superhero thing)—has anything really special to offer Kimberly Fucking Hart other than shy glances that she tries to pass off as broody and a little mean and this shaky foundation she thinks people call _friendship_.

So it takes her weeks to finally pick up on what’s happening. Weeks of Kim putting her hand on Trini’s back when they’re walking to class or the way she always brushes her fingers across Trini’s when she hands back her water bottle after practice. Weeks of Kim helping Trini to her feet when Zack actually manages to score a hit, with a sly grin and a, “Want me to kick his ass?”

But she realizes it eventually. At a football game in late October, about a month after launching Rita into space, when she’s sitting between Kim and a very huffy Jason who looks pissed every time their team makes a mistake.

Billy goes to hand Trini the bottle of soda he’d gotten for her at the concession stand, goes to hand it around Kim, and Trini shivers just so as she grabs it and Kim sees.

Kim says, “Here,” and shucks off her jacket like it _isn’t_ forty degrees outside and drapes it over Trini’s shoulders.

“You’re gonna freeze to death, Jack,” she snarks, but burrows into the pink fabric of the sweater anyway. Almost involuntarily.

And Kim just grins. Says, “There was plenty of room on that door,” and steals a few drinks of her _Mountain Dew._

Kim spends the rest of the game subtly shivering, and never asks for the jacket back but it isn’t until Kim says, “Keep it. I like it better on you,” when she’s dropping Trini off at her house a few hours later that it finally sinks in.

That she finally realizes that maybe her (enormous) crush isn’t entirely one-sided.

Of course, that isn’t to say she does anything about it. Or that she doesn’t try.

She nearly catches Kim under the mistletoe Billy’s mom puts up around Christmas, but then Jason pushes past her to stand by Trini and she has to let him press a kiss to her cheek just so Zack will stop yelling that, “It’s the rules, Trin! The _rules_!”

In March, she asks Kim to the spring dance _for real_ but accidentally cracks under the pressure of the silence after that question and ends up blurting out an, “As friends, of course.”

But Kim agrees and she _does_ get a slow-dance, even if it’s over-exaggerated to be funny and Zack pushes Trini out of the way to steal the remainder of the dance with Kim away.

And then finally, blessedly, they’re sitting on the edge of Kim’s roof one night when they’re _supposed_ to be studying for finals, talking about how scared they are about the future and _senior year_ and Trini is chalking up the tension between them to the unauthorized pressure that stargazing immediately puts on potentially romantic situations and the knowledge that Rita could still be out there somewhere.

And Kim is wallowing and talking about how she’d wanted to go to Berkley and how she _can’t_ now and Trini says, “You’re, like, super smart, though, dude. Like I’m sure it’s gonna be cool or whatever even if we can’t necessarily leave town to go to college, you know?”

It hadn’t been particularly suave, but Trini’s love language _never_ is, but Kim stares at her for a really long time with this look in her eyes and then—

Kim kisses her. She bridges the gap between them and plants one on her.

And then one kiss leads to two and two leads to hardcore making out on the slanted roof when Trini’s hands find Kim’s hips and Kim makes that _noise_ until Trini gets overexcited and nearly knocks Kim off the roof entirely.

But, yeah. It starts in June.

And that’s fine because it was always going to happen eventually. When a cute girl pushes you off a cliff there’s only a few good responses, and Trini thinks the best of them is kissing her.

Because she’s known pretty much since then—since Alpha-5 caught them staring at each other across the ship that first day—and Kim mumbles into her mouth that she’s known since then, too.

They just sort of thought everyone else had known, too.

.

But apparently not Jason.

Jason who sits across from them in the IHOP downtown two days after school lets out and peruses the menu like nothing has changed.

Like Trini’s entire life hasn’t been split open and hulked out and rebuilt into something _good_ for once.

They’re celebrating something. Possibly the start of summer.

But Trini can’t think straight with Kim’s hand rubbing against her thigh under the table, so she can’t really remember.

It’s not obvious to Zack either, who’s sitting at a table he pulled up to the booth and ripping apart sugar packets to pour their contents into a small pile on the table.

Or Billy who is talking quickly about all the options on the menu that he _won’t_ be getting even though it’s too early for any of them to wrap their head around what he’s saying.

 “Do they have Coke or Pepsi here?” Jason asks suddenly, eyeing the breakfast page.

And the answer is printed on the menu by his thumb, but Trini rolls her eyes and leans forward to say, “Pepsi, I think,” without any hint of malice or displeasure.

She doesn’t even throw in an unnecessary _idiot_ to the end of that or say it’s too early for that much sugar.

Zack sits up a little straighter in his seat and plants his elbows on the table to give her a long look. “You’re in a weird mood today,” he says and Kim is spelling something out on the bare skin of her thigh, her nail a little sharp against the skin she finds there, so she can’t really think of anything good to say back. “You were smiling earlier when you came in.”

He leans even further forward and Trini is glad that Kim is between them as a buffer because otherwise she’d have his coffee breath in her face as he whispers, “Do you need help getting rid of the body?”

He’s grinning now—that stupid, little Zack smile where his lips twist up at the sides and his eyes crinkle. Normally it makes her smile reflexively because she likes Zack, likes to see him happy and playful even with his mom bedridden at home.

Not that she’d ever say that to his face.

But, today, she’s not really sure how to explain that she was smiling because Kim held the door open for her and minutes earlier she’d used that same hand—the hand that’s now on Trini’s _knee_ —to cup her jaw as she bit Trini’s lower lip across the gear shift in her car.

“Why do you always immediately go to murder?” Kim asks and Jason looks up from the menu to frown at her.

“Yeah,” Trini chimes in and Kim moves that hand to hers under the table and gives it a squeeze. “Can’t I just be in a good mood?”

Zack shrugs and leans back, flicking an empty Splenda packet to the floor. “I guess. It’s just weird.”

“He’s right,” Billy chimes in. “I mean…Not about the murder thing or the making-a-mess-on-the-table-that-someone-else-is-going-to-have-to-clean-up thing.”

Zack looks down at the sugar pile and shifts guiltily in his seat at having been called out.

“You’re just usually a bit more subdued,” Jason adds. “Like…sarcastic, I guess.”

Kim swivels her head to look at Trini and Trini’s eyes immediately move down to the other girl’s mouth, to those lips and she has to look away after a second.

She wants to say that she’s happy because three days ago she’d only ever kissed two other girls and both of those had ended with one of them running away—her first; the other girl the second time.

She wants to say that Kim is probably something like her girlfriend now and that’s pretty awesome and makes her hate the world a little less.

Makes her want to _not hide_ or run away for once.

But that seems sort of heavy for ten o’clock on a Friday morning and her and Kim haven’t really discussed the whole _coming out_ thing, mostly because she thought Zack at least knew. Probably Jason, too, because he stopped pursuing Kim at some point and there _had_ to be a reason for that, right?

But maybe not.

What she says is, “Fine. Sorry for not being an asshole today. Won’t happen again, freaks,” and no one asks about the obvious hickey on Kim’s neck or the fact that they’re _obviously_ holding hands because Trini eats with her right hand even though she’s left-handed.

And yeah, maybe they can’t super count on the guys to be observant.

.

“We should tell them, right?” Kim asks that afternoon as they’re sitting in her living room.

Trini lies on the couch, her feet in Kim’s lap and she’s trying not to move because she knows that the leather is going to pull on her legs the moment she decides to move. “I guess?” she says like it’s a question and she stares up at the ceiling fan.

Kim is stroking the skin above her sock, right at her ankle and it tickles but Kim’s fingers are warm and it’s nice so she doesn’t move away.

“I mean…I just thought we were all connected,” Kim is saying next. “Like, I can tell when one of them is going to town on a piece of pizza because I get all like, food-happy for no reason and my brain just goes _Jason_ but—”

And, yeah. That’s sort of crazy when you put it into words, but Trini feels that too. They all do.

Billy had asked her about the fight she had with her mom a couple of months ago after her mom found blood on her flannel during laundry day.

 _I thought I felt you get angry last night,_ he’d said at her locker the next morning and—

It’s kinda nice, she guesses, but also extremely unsettling.

She’d thought for sure they’d have felt her heart pounding that night on the roof with Kim’s tongue in her mouth and her palms hot on her waist, or that their blood would sing _finally_ like hers had, but—

“I guess not,” she says. “We’ll tell them.”

And when she finally sits up then, the leather pulls a bit painfully on the back of her thighs but then Kim is kissing her, smoothing her palms over her sore skin, and it doesn’t matter anyway.

.

So when Zack says, “Bonfire tonight?” that Sunday after training, when they’re all still panting and drenched from the water at the base of the cliff, Kim catches Trini’s eye and then shakes her head.

Jason nods his consent, taking off his shirt to wring it out because he’s _that guy_ apparently. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m in.”

And Billy says, “We don’t have school tomorrow,” which is Billy-speak for _yes_.

Zack’s eyes immediately flick to Kim and Trini and yeah, okay. She probably could say she’s in on both of their behalves, because there’s no real reason to be _out._

Or, actually.

The irony of that is sort of appalling.

The only reason to say no is to use it as a way to clue them in.

“Uh, actually,” Kim cuts in. Apparently, Trini has taken too long. “Trini and I were gonna…um…”

Her eyes dart to Trini’s, as if asking for permission and help in the same look.

“We were going to go have dinner together. At Kim’s house. Alone.”

And, there. That sounds plenty couple-y.

“Just the two of us. By candlelight. And listening to Melissa Etheridge,” she throws in. And, sure, she made up the thing about the candlelight and Melissa Etheridge, but that definitely screams _not-_ platonic and _gay_.

The boys stare at them silently for what feels like five minutes but can’t be more than five seconds.

Zack looks confused and Kim is standing next to Trini, the backs of their hands brushing together, but then Jason is just saying, “That sounds nice. Like…”

“Girls’ night,” Zack throws in and he doesn’t even make it sound like an innuendo.

Which Trini hadn’t known was possible.

“It’s nice that you two are such good friends,” Jason offers with a light smile playing on his lips as he pulls his shirt back on.

Trini thinks, suddenly, of Kim on her lap last night—the TV playing something mindless behind them—and then Kim’s hot breath against her ear, her jaw, her collarbone.

_Good friends._

“Jase,” Kim says gently and Trini thinks she’s going to correct him, going to say that, okay, yeah, they’re girls and they're  _friends_ and it’s not necessarily _less_ important when they’re dry-humping on the couch but it does tend to take the backseat sometimes.

But Jason isn’t listening or can’t hear her. Either way, he’s moved on and is already heading toward their usual bonfire spot.

Clapping Billy on the back and saying, “We should really bring stuff for s’mores next time,” and Zack is giving them this little wave and then—

They’re just standing there.

Staring at each other pitifully.

“They’re so fucking stupid,” Trini mutters and kicks at a rock, but Kim’s fingers slipping through the empty belt loops of her shorts to bring their hips bumping together makes things a little less frustrating.

.

So, at least they can tell their parents, right?

“I mean, they should probably find out before they walk in on us anyway,” Kim says on Trini’s bed that night after climbing in the window, rolling her hips down into Trini’s who groans into her neck.

“I guess,” she sighs out in a puff of air that blows Kim’s curtain of hair around a little.

And she has a point, but she honestly thinks that it would be giving her parents too much credit if she honestly said they were better at picking up signals than Jason Scott.

.

As she’d thought, though, hints don’t work.

Her mom is one of those women who uses the word _girlfriend_ for every female friend she possesses, so she doesn’t put much stock in her daughter saying, “My girlfriend,” and simply smiles in delight that her daughter seems to have picked up something from her after all.

Her dad doesn’t get it either, doesn’t even look up from his dinner the first time she uses the word—tests it out on the tip of her tongue and smiles a little, despite herself. Neither do her brothers, who are fighting over the last dinner roll.

As always, her mother asks where she’s been, where she disappears to during the day, but she normally just gets a noncommittal shrug that will lead to about thirty straight minutes of her mom rambling and partially yelling over the rest of the meal.

Tonight, she gets a, “I was at my girlfriend’s.”

But maybe her mom hears it more plural than that. Hears it as _girlfriends’_.

Or something.

Because her mom says, “That’s great, honey. I’m so glad you’re making friends.”

And that _has_ to mean she didn’t get the point at all, right?

.

“Girlfriend, huh?” Kim breathes into the phone that night and Trini is glad they’re not in the same room.

Glad that Kim can’t see the way she pulls her beanie over her ears as they grow red in embarrassment. Glad Kim can’t see her bite her lip nervously as she flops down on the bed.

She goes to say something witty, or biting, but Kim beats her to it.

“In an, ‘Oh, me and my girlfriend, Kimberly Hart, went shopping yesterday,’ way or a, ‘this is my girlfriend and occasional hump-buddy,’ way?”

Trini laughs despite herself and draws her knees up to her chest, cradling her phone closer to her ear. “Well, you left a hickey on my collarbone this afternoon, so I’m gonna go with the latter?”

And Kim laughs too—this light sound that she’s making, like, five miles away and it still sends this fluttering feeling through Trini like a lightning bolt. “I would hope so,” Kim says.

There’s this moment of silence. Just the sound of the crickets outside, faintly, and the buzz of the air conditioning past the vents in Trini’s room. A faint tapping on Kim’s end that sounds like a keyboard.

Trini likes the silence. Likes the way she can hear Kim breathing into the mic on her phone, the way that, if she closes her eyes, she can almost imagine being in Kim’s room with her. Stretched out on her bed.

“How do you do that?” she mutters, more to herself than to anyone in particular, but Kim picks up on it.

Says, “Do what?” in this lightly amused tone that has Trini thinking of those hot fingers tangled through her hair earlier, those lips trailing down her neck.

She shrugs. “Nothin’,” she mutters, but Kim’s laugh doesn’t sound believing.

.

So she tries again a week or so later because she comes home for a change of clothes after training to find her mom scrubbing pans furiously in the kitchen sink.

Her dad’s car is gone from the driveway but she can imagine the slamming of the front door, the bitter words her parents sometimes throw across the room about silly things like toys being left out when they’re really about lots of other stuff Trini doesn’t want to think about.

Stuff like moving five times since Trini’s tenth birthday. Stuff like their (probably) gay daughter and that time she’d walked in on Trini kissing that girl from two towns ago.

And she doesn’t really mean to make it about her. That’s not the point at all. She just hates the way her mother is crying so silently as she digs that sponge into the cast iron.

So she slides into the kitchen and leans back against the counter, crossing her arms and pushing the thought of Kim swinging by to pick her up in twenty minutes to go to Billy’s for dinner to the back of her mind.

“Mamí?” she starts and her mother stops scrubbing to look at her, as if surprised and undone at this simple act of Trini’s words. “You okay?”

Her mother doesn’t have to say _no_. Not really. She just says, “Your father…” and trails off unevenly before resuming her scrubbing.

And Trini isn’t great at comfort words because she’s never really received any to learn from, but she manages to say, “You know, um, Kim and I fight sometimes. Not anything too bad, but, like, the other day? I made this joke to a friend of ours about, um…”

She trails off, thinks of saying _The only reason cheerleaders can even **jump** that high is because their heads are filled with air _when they passed by the school so Jason could brood over summer football tryouts.

And she hadn’t meant it. Not really. She’d just seen that girl Amanda with the other cheerleaders out on the field and remembered all those times she’d sent sneers Kim’s way in the hallway over the school year and she hadn’t even _thought_ about it and—

That was the problem.

Kim had been so hurt she wouldn’t even admit she was hurt. She just stopped talking and went home.

It had taken Trini three tries to climb into Kim’s window with that damned Walgreens bouquet of flowers and another five minutes of calling herself an idiot for Kim to intervene with a kiss and an, “I forgive you, weirdo.”

She clears her throat. “Never mind.” She continues with, “But, like…I don’t know. I said something stupid I didn’t mean and she was hurt but I apologized and she forgave me and we’re fine now.”

It feels weird to give her mom advice, to pat her mom’s shoulder stiffly and say, “I’m sure it’ll be okay.”

And really lame, to boot.

She doesn’t really even think about the fact that she probably just outed herself until her mom looks at her, all bemused, and says, “Mija, I appreciate your concern, but this is very different than that."

Trini’s lips turn down and she tries not to overanalyze why she’s so _disappointed_ that she didn’t just out herself at all.

Her mom sets down the sponge and the pan and turns off the sink before turning to look at her daughter. “Your father and I love each other very much. Fights like this don’t last forever. Eventually, we always work it out. That's what happens when you love someone, darling. You always find a way to move on.”

And, yeah, that had pretty much been what she was trying to say.

.

Kim’s parents throw a benefit in mid-July. Just some swanky dinner to raise money for some of the small businesses that are still reeling from the destruction almost a year ago, because they’re sort of elitist and have all these connections.

It’s in Bremser Park near the docks and Kim invites all of them one day when they’re sitting around in her living room watching Billy kick Zack’s ass at Mario Kart.

“I don’t own a tux,” is what Zack says, sliding his way off the edge of rainbow road and cussing under his breath.

“I have one you can borrow,” Jason says noncommittally, without looking up from his phone and he doesn’t see the smirk Zack throws him.

“If you want me to get into your pants, just say so, Scott.”

He falls off the side again a second later when Jason whacks him over the head with a pillow.

“Those are decorative!” Kim scolds, suddenly fierce and Trini smirks a little and hides it behind her hand because she looks so much like her mother when she does that.

“Do we have to bring a date?” Billy asks just as he’s pulling up to the finish line before twisting his head around to look at Kim on the couch.

One of those decorative pillows is resting on her right leg, the other half of it on Trini’s left and their hands are tangled together underneath it. Hidden from sight.

Kim shakes her head.

“Can we bring one?” Trini jokes and Kim smirks at her, but the others hear.

Zack says, “Got a girlfriend we don’t know about?”

His voice is bitter, heavy from his constant campaign of being a sore loser and Trini looks at him frowning.

Feels Kim squeeze her hand under the pillow.

When she looks, Kim just gives her the subtlest of nods as if to say _go for it._

“Uh, yeah, actually,” Trini starts and feels another squeeze to her fingers. “Um, Kim.”

The boys stare at them for a moment—ignore Toad doing a victory dance on the screen and Zack’s mouth hangs open for a moment before it slides into a grin.

Trini feels her chest swell a little and Kim is smiling too, her fingers a little hot against Trini’s.

And then they all start laughing.

“That was good,” Jason says a minute later, still laughing, and Zack and Billy bob their heads along with it. “You had me going for a second.”

Against her side, she feels Kim exhale sharply, irritated, and when she looks Kim is frowning intensely. “It’s not a joke. Trini’s my date to the benefit next week.”

Her fingers twitch and Trini presses into her before fixing each of the boys with her trademark glare in turn.

But Jason just says, “Right, so I guess that means Billy is mine.”

And Zack throws in, “And I’m taking my girlfriend, Sue Storm,” and they all start laughing again.

And the girls just sit there, their posture and frowns completely ignored.

.

When they arrive at the park that Friday, Kim loops her arm through Trini’s and Zack nudges them and says, “You guys are too funny,” and pushes past them, heading for the refreshment table.

Kim is beautiful in her dress, even as she huffs out a sigh through parted lips.

Trini reaches up to brush her fingers through the taller girl’s bangs and says, “I’m sorry our friends are complete morons,” as she eyes Billy and Jason bobbing to the string quartet Kim’s parents hired while Zack shovels down some shrimp.

It’s hot outside, even as the sun sinks below the hills to the sound of waves rolling up and down the shore. Trini feels a little sticky in her dress—the one she’d had to borrow from Kim because she “didn’t have anything remotely black-tie” according to her girlfriend—but she wraps her fingers around Kim’s wrist and doesn’t let go.

Sometime after Kim’s dad makes an announcement about how much they’ve raised so far in the evening—after the sun has gone completely and it’s just fairy lights strung up on poles around the shelter house and stage—Kim’s mom finds them and says how good they both look.

“And you brought Jason Scott?” she asks, eyeing the boy across the grass.

And it’s funny because Kim has only spoken to Jason, like, twice all night, still pissed off from this whole not-being-taken seriously ordeal, but her mom must have seen that and made assumptions she shouldn’t have.

For God’s sake, her and Trini had _danced_ together. More than once. To slow songs.

With Trini’s face tucked into Kim’s neck.

Trini starts to pull away, but Kim grabs her hand before she can get too far.

“Actually, Trini is my date tonight,” Kim tells her mother, sounding bold and proud and making Trini’s chest feel embarrassingly light.

Kim’s mom watches her for a moment, eyes roving over her daughter’s face as if trying to gauge how serious she is, and then she smiles. “I’m so happy you’ve grown into the kind of young woman who puts friends before boys, Kimmy,” she says and presses a kiss to her daughter’s cheek before leaving them to mingle.

They just stand there for a minute after that, letting it all sink in.

And then Trini says, “You wanna get out of here?” and Kim nods and they walk the two miles back to Trini’s house in their heels—too aggravated to spend another ten-minute ride with the boys.

.

Two nights later, they go to dinner together and the waitress makes a comment about them being sisters and Trini breaks her fork clean in half.

.

“You need to get laid,” Zack says one afternoon after training when they’re lying in the sun at the mine letting their clothes dry.

“Huh?” she asks, and she’s hardly listening to him—thinking of Kim off _shopping_ with her mom for something or another.

“Lots of tension at training today,” Zack explains and now she’s thinking of Kim trapping her in the dirt with her thighs on either side of Trini’s hips, pushing her hands above her head and whispering, _Give up?_ in that _voice_.

And, maybe he’s not wrong.

“There’s a cute girl that works at _Subway._ Want me to hook you up?”

And Trini rolls her head to look at him, basking in the sun and looking genuinely proud of himself and she sighs.

“No, thanks,” she mutters and tries not to think _at all._

.

It isn’t until August—two weeks before school starts back up—that it all finally comes out.

Trini’s house is supposed to be empty—her parents out of town visiting her aunt and uncle with her brothers—and it’s late, her birthday still a few days away, when Kim drives them there after spending the day out celebrating.

Trini is sore and her lip is still split because she’s terrible at rollerblading and Kim is trying to make it up to her.

Saying things like, “I promise to kiss it better a hundred more times if that will help.”

And, “I _really_ thought you saw that little boy there.”

And, “My hands were sweaty! I didn’t mean to let go!”

Mostly, Trini is giving her a hard time. Her lip will be healed in an hour, two at the most, but Kim is flustered and handsy when she’s worried and Trini isn’t the kind to turn down that kind of thing.

So she lets Kim push her into her front door and press a kiss to her bottom lip. Lets her whisper, “I’m sorry, baby,” as she unlocks the door blindly and opens it so they can fall inside, her mouth opened to another kiss and there’s hardly ever any room for her to _feel_ all of this, much less see or hear at the same time, so they don’t really notice the lights coming up.

Don’t hear the very loud, “Surprise!” that immediately peters off at the sight of them.

Not at first, at least.

And they spring apart, expecting to see Jason, Billy, and Zack at worst and are instead met, also, with the sight of Trini’s parents and brothers and Kimberly’s parents, too.

All of them staring, Zack’s mouth hung much wider than Trini ever thought possible, even when there are waffles involved.

“Uh…” Kim manages to groan and Trini decides, in that moment, that all of this would be much, much funnier if her hand hadn’t been grabbing Kim’s ass, like, five seconds ago.

“Happy birthday, Trini!” Billy shouts out happily and he’s holding this really big sheet cake that has her name scrawled on it in yellow, loopy letters.

“Um, thanks,” Trini says quietly, trying not to meet her parents’ eyes.

The silence in the room is a tangible, breathing thing, until Zack says, “Leave it to Trini Ortiz-Kwan to completely highjack the meaning of ‘surprise party’,” and murders it.

And then everyone starts laughing.

Even Trini’s mother.

Even Kim’s dad who’s face had been turning a dangerous shade of red just a few seconds prior.

Even Jason who says, “So it wasn’t a joke?” as he sidles up to them to loop his big heavy arms around their shoulders.

Kim shakes her head into his chest in an attempt to hide her face and mutters a, “No, you guys are just really, really dumb sometimes.”

Zack high-fives her and Billy says, “I’m gonna set the cake down now,” and leaves to hunt down a lighter with her dad so they can light the candles.

Trini’s mother is the one she’s afraid to look at, even with her brothers wrapped around her legs so she can’t walk, saying, “Gross!” in unison—which, she supposes, is better than singing that _K-I-S-S-I-N-G_ song.

But her mom doesn’t say anything as Trini makes her way over. Nothing bad, at least, and she doesn’t even seem like she _wants_ to scold her daughter. She just says, “She’s very pretty, mija,” and leaves to get everyone plates for the cake.

And there were a lot of ways this could have gone wrong.

A lot of different ways for everyone to react.

But Kim’s dad claps Trini on the back during everyone’s off-key rendition of _Happy Birthday_ and Jason says, “I guess we probably should have trusted Kim to keep the party a secret so that _that_ hadn’t happened,” so guiltily that Trini presses into his side because apparently her mother isn’t upset by it and her dad is laughing with Kim’s parents across the room.

“And miss that show?” Zack asks on Jason’s other side. “Hell nah.”

“I thought something was off,” Billy throws in. “I’ve been feeling weird these past few months.”

“Yeah, me too,” Zack admits. “I just thought I found the _perfect_ sock.”

And Jason smacks him upside the head and Zack groans and tries to fight back, leading to a full out chase across the living room that breaks up the party for a moment or two and nearly sends Trini’s mom’s china cabinet careening into the adjacent wall.

But it’s fine.

Perfect.

Because Kim is next to her and everyone who’s _anyone_ knows now and the kiss Kim presses to Trini’s temple can happen in a room filled with their families, the way she pulls Trini into her arms is allowed and—

She feels it everywhere—in her whole body—when Kim laughs.

…

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> references.
> 
> Mario Kart (i.e. Toad & Rainbow Road), Titanic, Subway, IHOP, and probs a ton more I'm forgetting.
> 
> scream at me here or on tumblr at housewithoutwindows.


End file.
